


The Second Time You Wake

by ideserveyou



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: Angst, M/M, Moonlight, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 12:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideserveyou/pseuds/ideserveyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're cold, and it's your own fault</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Time You Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a challenge involving 'Second' in some way - so this is a second waking in the second person...

| You’re cold.  
  
  
That’s what’s woken you, dragging you from your sleep, the nagging feeling of having lost something, of being bereft and exposed.  
  
As indeed you have and indeed you are, alone in the too-wide bed, the fur covering having treacherously slipped off you and left your flank and your arse to be chilled by the night air and the unblinking gaze of the moon through the open shutter.  
  
You mutter a curse and haul the slippery pelt up from the floor, but the nagging feeling of loss is still with you, gnawing at you as you toss and turn and try to find a comfortable place on the lumpy straw of the mattress.  
  
There is none.  
  
Not even on the side where your sword-brother should be sleeping, flat on his back, serene and peaceful save when he has to kick you out of a snoring fit or a bad dream.  
  
You’re wide awake now, and still cold: not just in your body, but in your heart too.  
  
Your cheek still burns where he slapped you in the face; your mouth still burns with the memory of the kiss, taken without asking, taken because you knew it would never be given willingly, even should you ever have the courage to ask for it, but still you could not live another moment without it.  
  
For one glorious moment you had everything you had ever wanted; the next moment, nothing.  
  
You don’t know where he’s sleeping tonight. Or with whom.  
  
You tell yourself that you don’t care.  
  
But you know that you are lying.  
  
You’re cold.  
  
Try not to think about anything else.  
  
The square of moonlight creeps slowly, slowly across the foot of the bed.  
  
It has moved some way when you wake again.  
  
There is faint creak as the door opens; a rustle of the rushes on the floor.  
  
Then a warm body pressed against your back, and a whisper in your ear, unlooked-for, undeserved, returning to you all that you had lost, and more:  
  
“You’re cold.”  
---


End file.
